Modi, Xi spoke of need to stabilise ties in Bali, India confirms after China revealed it was more than exchange of courtesies

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping had discussed the need to stabilise the India-China relations during a chat at Bali in Indonesia on November 15 last year, New Delhi revealed on Thursday – three days after Beijing claimed that they had reached “an important consensus” during the interaction.

The Modi-Xi chat at a dinner during the G20 summit in Bali had earlier been played down in New Delhi just as an “exchange of courtesy”. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Government on Monday claimed in a statement that the interaction between the two leaders had led to “an important consensus” on stabilising the bilateral relations. Reacting to the statement issued in Beijing, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of the Government of India too on Thursday indicated that the interaction between the Prime Minister and the Chinese President had indeed gone beyond just an “exchange of courtesy”.

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The two leaders had exchanged courtesies and “spoke of the need to stabilise” the bilateral relations, Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the MEA, told journalists in New Delhi.

Modi and Xi had attended the 17th G-20 summit at Bali in Indonesia in November 2022, along with the leaders of 17 other nations and the European Union.

No formal bilateral meeting between the two leaders had taken place on the sideline of the summit. But they had shaken hands and exchanged courtesies at the end of a welcome dinner hosted by Indonesian President Joko Widodo on November 15 – for the first time after the Chinese PLA’s aggressive moves along the LAC and the Indian Army’s counter-deployment in April-May 2020 had resulted in the stand-off in eastern Ladakh.

The MEA had issued several press releases on the Prime Minister’s engagements in Bali, including his bilateral meetings with other leaders on the sideline of the G20 summit. But no such press release on his interactions with the Chinese President had been issued.

Before the Prime Minister and his entourage had left for New Delhi on November 16, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra had briefed journalists about his visit to Bali. In response to a query by a journalist on the Prime Minister’s meeting with the Chinese President, Kwatra had only said that the two leaders had been attending the dinner hosted by the Indonesian President Joko Widodo and they had “exchanged courtesies at the conclusion of the dinner”.

Bagchi, however, on Thursday said that Modi and Xi had “a general discussion” on the need to stabilise bilateral relations.

The key to “the resolution of the whole issue is to resolve the situation along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) on the western sector of the India-China boundary and to restore peace and tranquillity in the border areas”, the MEA spokesperson on Thursday reiterated New Delhi’s position on restoration of normalcy in bilateral ties between the two neighbouring nations.

New Delhi, however, did not clarify why it had not revealed in the past eight months that the two leaders had not only exchanged courtesies but also discussed the need to stabilise the bilateral relations during the chat in Bali on November 15 last year.

India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, who was later reappointed as the Foreign Minister of the communist nation, met on the sideline of a BRICS meeting at Johannesburg in South Africa on Monday. It was after the Doval-Wang meeting, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Government issued the statement, claiming that the leaders of the two nations had reached “an important consensus” during the interaction in Bali late last year.

Modi and Xi had met at a seaside resort at Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu in October 2019 for an “informal summit” – a sequel to the first such engagement that had been held at Wuhan in central China in April 2018. They had held a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the BRICS summit in Brasilia in November 2019. The two leaders, however, had held no such bilateral engagement in 2020 and 2021, as the military stand-off along the LAC, particularly the clash at Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020, had brought the relations between the two nations to a new low. They had also attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit at Samarkand in Uzbekistan on September 15 and 16 last year. But neither had they held any bilateral meeting on the sideline of the conclave, nor any exchange of pleasantries had come to the public domain – unlike the one on the sideline of the G20 summit in Bali.

Wang on July 14 had a bilateral meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on the sideline of an East Asia Summit conclave in Jakarta. The two sides followed it up with the Wang-Doval meeting in Johannesburg on Monday amid speculation over the possibility of a Modi-Xi bilateral meeting on the sideline of the BRICS summit, which would be held in the South African city next month. Xi is also expected to visit New Delhi for the G20 summit, which Modi will host on September 9 and 10 next.

Though protracted negotiations led to the mutual withdrawal of troops by both the Indian Army and the Chinese PLA from some of the face-off points along the LAC, like Galwan Valley, the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso, Gogra Post and Hot Springs, the stand-off could not be resolved completely so far.

The PLA troops deployed in Depsang, well inside the territory of India along the LAC with China, are still continuing to block the Indian Army’s access to Patrolling Points 10, 11, 12, 12A and 13. A face-off is also continuing in Demchok. Beijing has of late been claiming that the mutual withdrawal of troops by the Chinese PLA and the Indian Army from Patrolling Point 15 (Gogra-Hotsprings area) in September 2022 marked the restoration of normalcy along the LAC in eastern Ladakh. China’s claim appears to be an attempt to subtly build up pressure on India to accept the “new normal” in Depsang and Demchok areas.